US moves to eliminate landmines

UNICEF goodwill ambassador US actor Danny Glover simulates mine clearance equipment in a cleared area of a mine field, in Addis Tesfaye, near the border with Eritrea, Ethiopia, Friday, Nov 26, 2004. Glover is supporting UNICEF to attract the attention of the public ahead of the International Conference on landmines due to take place in Kenya this week. (AP Photo/Boris Heger)

Washington - The United States on Friday signaled its intent to eliminate its stockpile of anti-personnel landmines and to eventually join a global treaty banning their use, boosting efforts to rid the world of the weapons.

The high-profile announcement was made at a conference in Maputo, Mozambique, which was aimed at ultimately ensuring no armed forces use anti-personnel mines (APLs) by 2025.

The number of people killed or maimed by landmines fell in 2012, the global watchdog Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor says, but was still at 4,000. In many cases, the mines are leftovers from wars that ended decades earlier.

“Today at a review conference in Maputo, Mozambique, the United States took the step of declaring it will not produce or otherwise acquire any anti-personnel landmines (APL) in the future, including to replace existing stockpiles as they expire,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said a statement.

In 2009, Washington said it was reviewing its position on landmines but Ä along with rivals Russia and China Ä has failed to sign the Ottawa Convention that bans the use of APLs and envisions their eventual elimination.

Nuclear powers India and Pakistan have also not signed up.

Long-standing critics of the US policy say Washington's foes are waiting on the United States to move before they do likewise.

The White House gave no timeline as to when it might eventually sign the treaty, but Hayden said: “Our delegation in Maputo made clear that we are diligently pursuing solutions that would be compliant with and ultimately allow the United States to accede to the Ottawa Convention.”

“We are conducting a high fidelity modeling and simulation effort to ascertain how to mitigate the risks associated with the loss of APL,” she said.

“Other aspects of our landmine policy remain under consideration and we will share outcomes from that process as we are in a position to do so.”

The United States has provided more than $2.3 billion in aid since 1993 in more than 90 countries for conventional weapons destruction programs, Hayden noted.

Since Mozambique hosted its first landmine conference in 1999, the number of state parties to the mine ban convention has more than tripled from 45 to 161, although key major powers remain on the sidelines.

Mozambique, once one of the world's most heavily mined countries, is held up as an example of successful mine clearance in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the 1990s, it was estimated it would take 50-100 years to rid the former Portuguese colony of landmines planted during its war of independence and a subsequent civil conflict.

Today the country has set a deadline of the end of the year to be free of all known landmines.